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Do you remember the last time you saw a story in your local news about illicit activities at a massage parlor? What you might not have realized is that many of the women in the photos are actually human trafficking victims. Instead of being protected like other victims of crime, they are being exposed and publicly shamed.

Human trafficking is a business and the International Labour Organization estimates that it is a $150 billion global industry. A significant amount of this money will go through legitimate financial institutions, like retail bank branches.

Any vulnerable person is at risk for human trafficking, however, individuals with disabilities may face increased risk for several reasons.

Polaris released its newest ground-breaking report on how human trafficking business models attempt to intersect with and use legitimate businesses like financial services, social media, hotels & motels, transportation systems, health care, and housing and homelessness systems to further their operations in very specific ways to recruit and exploit victims.

If you’re a fan of the Netflix series Ozark, you’re probably already very familiar with the dangerous art of money laundering. 

Over the course of this year, hundreds of thousands of laborers from around the world will be invited to our shores as guest workers. They will come in search of economic opportunity, or for a summer job and an adventure. As the debate over immigration rages on, these men and women will pick our fruits and vegetables, mow our lawns, care for our children and clean our homes. They will be here legally, as guests of the United States government, under temporary work visas programs that have existed for decades and grown steadily over that time.

When was the last time you heard someone joke about a “happy ending” to a massage? Or walked past a massage business that seemed unusually unwelcoming — with covered windows, a locked door with a buzzer on it, maybe an “entrance around back” sign?

Human trafficking in massage parlors is the second most common type of trafficking reported to the National Human Trafficking Hotline. This is not surprising, given how ubiquitous these venues are. According to our recently published research, there are more than 9,000 illicit massage businesses (IMBs) — fronts for selling commercial sex — spread across every state in the United States.